Second week of Advent: Love for all peoples

11
Dec

Love is the theme of the second week of Advent and Advent seems a good time to deal with some theological concepts that have troubled me. (That might not be your first inclination when you think about love but stick with me here.) I’m interested to hear your perspective on this, so consider this an invitation to a conversation over the next couple weeks.

An original peekaboo page about love.

Here’s what’s peeking through the top layer.

The concept of Christmas is that we celebrate the coming to earth and infant birth of Jesus ( we can get into the immaculate conception another time). Good stuff right? I mean, a baby is a snuggly addition and the Bible was certainly due for a redemption story after the way many babies were treated in its pages, including Herod killing all the infant boys in an attempt to protect his throne from the one who’d been prophesied to overthrow it.

That little fleecy diapered baby didn’t happen in a vacuum; he was born into a Jewish family in the Middle East.

Read that again more slowly: a Jewish family in a country in the Middle East.

We might try to acknowledge this, but we only really think about it at Christmas time, and after that, in just about every single church I’ve ever been to, Jesus grows up into a hockey playing, lutefisk eating descendent of Vikings.

Foreigners, immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers, peoples who were in North America before western explorers “discovered” it, people of different faith traditions — all those people are somehow different, in many people’s view, than a teenage middle eastern couple looking for a place where they can find shelter and deliver a baby. We’re so quick to cast people as “other” and so quick to develop convenient amnesia about the roots of Christian faith. We shouldn’t forget the lessons of love for all peoples that we learn at Christmas time just because a couple months have passed and the remnants of pine needles have finally been picked out of the carpet.

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When we talk about love, or the idea of Jesus being “love come down” it’s way too easy to whitewash Jesus’s heritage and background. He could have been put into any family in the entire world. But he was placed into a middle eastern family that had no trouble blending into African surroundings when they were on the run. White/Caucasian churches tend to overlook that information, if not deliberately then passively, and then discover it strikes them as surprising (or even offensive) when anyone suggests Jesus could be anything other than Caucasian. Even though much Western art has portrayed Jesus as a white man with blue eyes above his flowing beard, the Bible is quite specific about the lineage of Jesus. This Jewish/MiddleEastern/African Jesus should not come as a shock for people who spend so much time insisting on a literal reading of the Bible.

If it ruffles our feathers to think about God choosing to send Jesus in the form of a person with a brown body, people who are caucasian (like me — specifically Scandinavian and European descent) need to take a look at our own biases. One of the best checks of my own implicit bias is a little self reflection when I see imagery that agitates me or seems quite different than what I’ve always seen. Why does it strike me as unusual? Is the usual way I see it an accurate portrayal? What do I think is the “right” way for something to be portrayed?

The counter argument to acknowledging Jesus’ lineage is usually something along the lines of saying, “Well, I don’t see color,” or “Why does it matter where he was born since he’s God and is now all spirit and doesn’t have a body anyway,” or to lean heavily on the Middle Eastern but definitely not African delineation. If it’s so unimportant, then why get discombobulated by the idea that he wasn’t a fair skinned person? If it’s so unimportant, why make sure to point out he wasn’t from Africa? Might I take the liberty of pointing out that Egypt is in Africa and when they were on the run Jesus’ family took off to Egypt?

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If love has come in the person of a non-white person, what does that say about my position as a white female or my action and advocacy regarding the treatment of our brothers and sisters of color? If love has come in the person of a Jewish man, what does it say about people’s tolerance of anti-semitic rhetoric, even in the form of old jokes, or hate-filled actions?

What does it say about us white folks if we can only follow someone with the same skin color as us?

It’s something we should stop and consider, and Advent is an appropriate time for such reflection.

Are you used to the idea of God as a white dude with a long flowing beard? Or Jesus as a blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian?

Want to read Advent posts from previous years? Here’s my post on Love from last year and then here’s one from two years ago. And if you missed last week’s post on Hope, you can read it here.

Advent and the first week: Hope

8
Dec

Advent is the anticipation of Christmas, a time of preparation. Different traditions have slightly different liturgical themes for each week, but it has deep historical roots which you can read about here

Wreaths and colored candles

The Advent wreath is a circle (are there wreaths that are NOT circles, and wouldn’t a straight wreath count as a swag?) and has five candles. Each of these candles is symbolic and each week, one more candle is lit.

But did you know circular Advent wreaths date back to the time of Luther, and they represent God’s endlessness and eternity? Well there ya go. Although I must say it feels ironic to use something like pine boughs to represent something without end, since when we’ve taken down our live trees they’ve left at least half their needles on the floor where even after I’ve swept multiple times they lurk like little booby traps until spring.

The candles of an Advent wreath are usually purple or royal blue, with one being pink or rose (we’ll talk about that in a future post) and the final one being white to symbolize the purity of Jesus.

Reality

While I like the idea of Advent, (and appreciated being pregnant with all three of my children during Advent — it was an especially poignant time) many times it feels like another commitment within an already busy time. And as much as I want to focus in the whole reason why we’re celebrating in the first place…sometimes it just doesn’t come together.

So here my tree sits, cut at the tree farm and decorated with white lights… and nothing more.

That’s just the reality of it.

[Note: the tree just got fully decorated last night but there are still not many other decorations up yet.]

Hope

This first week of Advent is Hope, and I hoped to get this post up earlier this week but it’s taken me this long! That’s again where the idealized (fantastical) reality and the actual reality meet.

This is a slippery topic because I’m an optimist. There’s almost always a bright side, a silver lining to find. And I’ve found that tendency can venture dangerously close to delusion. But here’s a small reflection on Hope.

Hope

It’s a hearty, determined tree, that’s lived through many storms, the kind that seems ready to topple but each spring it leafs out, its branches lusty for the sun and warm breeze.

It’s a fragile, resilient fiddle head fern pushing up through the brown leaf clutter, sure there’s something brighter on the other side.

It’s power creates a well-meaning denial, a befuddlement in the face of facts,

a moving violation – hit broadside from blind alley, totaling the car and leaving you with a limp.

It’s one more try, one more tactic, one more appointment, one more meeting, one more new year’s resolution, once more into the breech because

This time

This time might be the one,

And we just need one.

We’d take more, but we just need one.

Do you take much time for Advent? How do you set the tone for your holiday season? I’d love to hear about your traditions!

“Talking about grief can make you feel sad” and things that were probably obvious to everyone but me

21
Feb

One of my favorite words is “fun” followed closely by “come on!” and “adventure”. These roll off my tongue like so many gumballs off a conveyor belt. “That sounds fun” or “It’ll be fun” or simply ” Oh, fun!” are phrases I’ve become aware of as having inherent merit and investment value — if something’s gonna be fun then it’s almost automatically worth the effort involved.

Photo credit: Morguefile: @ameestauffer

You know what’s not fun?

Grieving.

Loss.

Sorrow.

Mourning.

Sickness.

Death.

These things suck, plain and simple. Talking about them feels like a bummer, something inherently NOT fun and thereby something to avoid. Even though that’s my first reaction, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about them. It’s just that it’s hard. It can make a person feel sad (shocker, right?).

Don’t mis-hear me though. These things also have merit and value, if only because they have to because, you know, life.

Life happens and people get sick, people lose their jobs, things fall apart, and everything does absolutely NOT go according to plan, despite all our best efforts.

I’m starting to realize (reluctantly) that grief is a natural part of life.

Sorry. I wish it wasn’t that way.

This is probably something everybody else already knew that I didn’t.

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I don’t think things are this way because we screwed up God’s plan, even though that’s what I was taught way back when and what’s still being taught in many churches today. The line of thinking goes: If only that evil snake hadn’t fooled that ambitious Eve and that dimwitted Adam hadn’t just gone along with it, everything would be different.

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I’ve started to think of grief as part of the full range of human experience, as much as that’s bad news all around. Most of the time I think it would feel nicer if this wasn’t the case.

Do a little brain exercise with me, and let’s test that theory.

Pretend that everything had gone according to God’s plan (as some people think we know it (sorry to be contrary but I can’t just agree with everyone, even if I do like people to get along, and I’m just not so sure anymore about this anymore — another result of the process of grief for me.)) and everything was perfect. There was no sickness, there was no sadness, there were no tears for God to wipe away or store in some bottle.

Pretty awesome, right? I mean, how can you find fault with sunshine, rainbows and hugs all day long? You just can’t…right?

There was a time when I would have agreed. There would be nothing better than to be perfectly happy at all times, with no sadness or loss of any kind. Sounds like a super-sweet gig. (Also sounds like what I’ve seen of people when they’re doped up, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Anyway, it sounds like a sweet gig…

Until…

Until you realize that what you’re talking about is a one-sided experience, however blissful that may be for a while. What you’re imagining as perfection is a charicature, a cardboard cut-out, and it lacks the depth of full experience that magnifies the happiness of happiness, that cultivates an appreciation for the joy it claims to understand.

You’ll never get the power of the resolution without the tension.

As hard as it is, various forms of grief are a natural part of the way things just are, and it doesn’t help (meaning it doesn’t change anything) to rage against it, although that’s part of a natural response to grief. Friends are going to decide they don’t want to hang around with you anymore, significant others are going to decide they no longer wasn’t to be significant to you, offers on a perfect house are going to fall through, job promotions will be given to someone else, people you love — or even you — are going to have a health issue that can’t be undone with as many prayers and juice diets you might perform.

I know.

It’s rotten.

Nobody tells us this as kids, unless it’s already a part of your childhood experience. but even then, most parents wouldn’t go into great detail about any specific hardship facing the child or the family. I don’t say to my child with a chronic health condition, “Here, honey, here’s a list of all the things you’re going to have to handle that other people won’t even think to think about.” Nobody does that.

Should they?

What good would that do anyone?

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Talking about grief bums me out. Being a participant in grief is not easy. It’s draining and hard. And it is sneaky, showing up in ways that are impossible to prepare for.

Talking about grief, however, allows others to comfort us. It allows others to show their care for us. And it may allow others to be less isolated in their own journey of grief.

My dad died three and a half years ago. It doesn’t feel like it could possibly have been that long. How can we still be functioning? How can we as a family ever see each other and not talk about it? How can he have missed so many moments and events and birthdays and milestones and phone calls and questions and the national crisis that is presidency of 45? How can he keep not being here?

but he is gone. that’s just the way it is. and no amount of missing him can change that.

This fall, my 36-year-old cousin suddenly passed away. No car accident, no serious underlying health issue. She just suddenly passed away and we don’t know a reason why. How do you wrap your mind around that?

Just when you think you’ve navigated the most difficult waters, another storm blows in and a rogue wave threatens to capsize your boat.

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Retreat House Podcast thoughtfulness

Talking about grief is good for us to do together. I talked to my friend at Retreat House Podcast about grief and I barely even cried. Okay, I might have cried a little in the car on the way to meeting up with her, a little during our conversation, and maybe some more in the car after I left. But don’t rub it in.

If you want to listen to our conversation, you can click this link and shoot right over to that episode of her podcast. She’s doing a whole series on grief, and as weird as it might sound to say it, hearing other people’s stories about grief is good. Maybe it’s because we hear things we can relate to, whatever type of loss it might be. Maybe it’s because it makes us realize we’re not alone. Maybe it challenges us to think about how we respond to people around us who are walking in the middle of grief. As much as it’s hard and there’s residual sadness that comes from talking about grief (who knew? Talking about sorrow can make you sad!), I hope you’ll find it weirdly encouraging.

If you are willing, I’d welcome your stories of walking though grief in your own life, if that’s not too hard for you right now. If it is, I hope you find the comfort and support you need today.

Ashes and construction-paper hearts

14
Feb

Most of us have those childhood experiences of a beloved pet dying (or in my instance discovering that your dog has love-licked your sister’s gerbil to death), we try to nurture that seed in a plastic cup only to see it shrivel from our exuberant watering. The example can be closer, say an elderly grandparent passes away, or a difficult diagnosis threatens our sense of health and well-being.

At what point of human development do we become aware of our own mortality? And does that awareness serve us or subjugate us?

…most of us attempt to escape from death concerns by avoiding life. This defensive denial of death has profoundly negative consequences for each person’s life.

Most people spend their lifetime without a great deal of self-awareness, living lives of emptiness and drudgery based on their early programming. They rarely reflect on their circumstances but rather are addicted to a lifestyle of form and routine. Few develop a life plan or project that gives value, substance or meaning to their daily lives. Humans are a meaning-seeking species, and when this experience is limited or excluded, they are deprived of their human heritage. – Robert Firestone, Ph.D.(Click here for s ource article.)

Thank you, Mr. Firestone, Ph.D., for being a beam of happy warm sunshine sent to brighten our day. Oy.

However gloomy, Mr. Firestone’s got a point. There are those folks who want to avoid thinking about death so badly that they disengage from true living.

That’s not to say a fixation on our ultimate end is a healthy strategy either, but an awareness of death as a part of the natural flow of life is a sure way to squeeze more living out of each experience we have the privilege of, well, experiencing.

And here we are, on the day when we remember that we’re all just a fleeting moment, that we are made from dust and to dust we shall return.

Andplusalsotoo, it’s Valentine’s Day, grand holiday of paper doilies, candy hearts, and expressing appreciation for special people in our lives. Or as The Princess Bride would suggest, Whatcha got that’s worth livin’ for

Isn’t that timing of Ash Wednesday and Valentines Day this year just a perfect analogy for the tension between an awareness of our own finite nature AND the full living — friendships and romantic relationships — we all wish to do?

Maybe there’s more here to deal with but for now I just wonder if you’d be willing to reflect on your own attitudes towards mortality, and also on love. Then, if you’re so inclined, report back on your discoveries. We’d love to hear from you.

Finding Joy in the smallest Places

23
Dec

Finding joy used to be like looking for sugar in a candy store, finding wonder and happiness was like stumbling through a daisy field looking for a flower. Without trying there was just so much happy to notice, and so much excitement that punctuated every day.

Sugar! Flowers! Yay!

Some of that was due to my natural temperament, some of it was probably connected to being younger, some of it was undoubtedly due to the unearned privilege of being insulated from the hardships that so many people face on a daily basis. It wasn’t that everything was constantly smooth or went according to plan, but those glitches felt like the exception and were fairly easy to recover from.

If I had to write about joy at that point, it would have been no problem.

It’s a little harder now, though not impossible. It’s a matter of perspective.

Last year I tried to write about joy during Advent, and even tried a couple art journal pages to work it out, but none of them were quite right. Here’s where you can check that out. There I mention a difference between joy and happiness.

Joy seems to be consistently connected to a spiritual state, a grounded connectedness to ourselves, those around us, and a higher spiritual purpose. …Happiness is almost a consumable good; joy is more durable.

These days finding joy is more difficult. There are so many things that seem to be going off the rails, globally and locally. Here’s a summary of sound bites from this year, and when listening it’s no wonder it can be hard to feel joyful. It’s been a helluva year and our political in particular continues to be intensely disturbing. Sex scandals, election tampering, a gag order for scientists, undercutting environmental safeguards, it’s all overwhelming and disheartening.

However, at what point could we ever have looked at things in the world on a large scale and feel joyful? There’s always been something going haywire, some despot wreaking havoc, some natural disaster displacing whole communities. You’d think we’d start to notice that “desolation” is humanity’s default setting.

Okay, I’m not saying we’re quite like that movie, but you get the idea.

According to the Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, desolation is one of two states humans move from and into. Sounds dramatic doesn’t it? The opposite of desolation is “consolation”. Consolation is used to describe moods of harmony and settledness, desolation is used to describe moods of inner turmoil or disconnectedness. (Click to learn more.) It is assumed that people will move from consolation to disconsolation. People won’t stay in one or the other indefinitely, which is important to remember so we have hope and appreciation.

Hope and appreciation.

I think those are both tied to joy.

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The thing I’ve discovered is my joyfulness improves when I adjust my perspective from being focused on large scale things down to smaller scale things:

The sound of my boys together downstairs practicing crazy loud music on their instruments, and actually being able to make out a tune.

Watching someone open a door for a stranger, and the stranger respond with gratitude.

The confidence of having a full tank of gas in a car you trust to get you to your destination.

Waking up one of your kids and having one of their first statements be, “I love you, Mom.”

These small moments remind us of our humanity, remind us of our smallness, and help restore out connectedness to others around us.

When I pay attention and take time to notice these things, I do better. I discover joy, that warm feeling that buoys us through hard times, that quiet confidence that there is good in the world if we’ll only remember to call it out in ourselves and others.

Joy can be a choice, and we have agency in cultivating more of it.

This is not joy that disregards the facts, this is joy that searches out the positive, the good, the things that tie us together as humanity and elevate us to our better selves. This is joy that seeks the details, the secret acts of good will, the quiet gestures of connection and celebrates those. This is calm noticing that settles down into the smallest moments, and then acknowledges their energy and the positive force they ripple out into the world. This is no flimsy pollyanna cliche. This is a brave act.

Original art by TC Larson

I really do wish you a joy-filled holiday season and believe you can help create that by deciding to choose joy. Go get ’em tiger.

On Advent which falls the day after a funeral

3
Dec

When people say the holidays can be hard, they’re not exaggerating.

As magical and warm as Christmas and New Years can be (throw Thanksgiving in there for good measure) they can be equally lonely and cold, and on top of the memories of those we can no longer celebrate with, there’s the pressure of obligation to celebrate that adds a layer of self-judgment when we can’t live up to our past standards.

It’s a season that’s complicated and challenging for many, many people.

Please allow me to relieve you of some of your burden.

There will be other Christmases.

That’s the beauty of traditions, the beauty of holidays. They come around every year. So if you need to sit this one out, it’s ok. You’ll get to take another crack at it next time. And guess what? If that doesn’t pan out like it used to, it’s no problem. You can see how it goes the next year. And if you need to run away for a while, if the traditions bring back too many memories that you just can’t revisit right now, then you lace up those shoes and you run. There’s no way to predict how you’ll need to do this and it’s a bit like having to let a fever run its course. It often gets worse before it gets better. And the “worse” can feel like the worst thing you’ve ever felt.

But who wants to hear that, that it’s going to get worse before it gets better? That’s cold comfort for someone in the earliest, rawest throes of grief. There’s got to be a better answer…except there’s not.

People try to offer these “better answers” by giving greeting card adages but we know as soon as we hear them they’re not representing the sorrow of deep loss. It’s possible they simply can’t encapsulate it into something palatable by the general public, except that loss is a universal human experience, so there’s a built-in market for it. You’d think they would have figured it out by now. Thing is, if they set up a bunch of people in their “Sympathy” card department, half the staff wouldn’t show up and the other half would stare at the wall or accidentally put their lunch into the letter-folder to warm up.

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A month after my dad passed away I set up an appointment with a counselor. As I sat in her office and explained the timeline and that it had only been a month, I could tell she was confused. Why was I there?

Wasn’t it obvious?

I needed her to tell me how to stop feeling so terrible. I needed her to tell me I was doing something wrong and here was the right way to process my dad’s death and the gaping hole made by his absence. So why was she confused? There was nothing confusing about it. She needed to FIX IT because this kind of pain is unbearable. I must be doing it wrong because I forget where I’m supposed to be going when I drive the car, I can’t taste anything but sugar, and even though my eyes feel like there’s a permanent layer of sand under my eyelids and they won’t stop leaking all the time even when I think I’m doing ok and not actually crying.

I’M NOT DOING OK AND YOU NEED TO FIX IT.

This must not have been the training she received at school. Because she did nothing to fix it. Nada. Buptkis.

She did take my money though. And I went back for non-fixing about four times.

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All of this to say if you want to talk to someone, do it. If you want to cry into the phone while your friend just sits with you on the other end, call ’em. If you want to hack down fifty trees in your back woods, grab the handsaw and remember to take some Tylenol when you’re done.

Maybe you won’t ever want to do advent or Christmas or Easter or 4th of July or Thanksgiving or any other pre-existing holiday ever again.

That’s ok. Let other people work on those holidays. Now you have your own awful dates to mark, ones personal to you and those closest to you. The first holiday without her. The birthday or the anniversary. And once you get through the firsts, the kicker is that THERE’S ANOTHER ROUND of the same thing next year, another year of them not being here.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow.

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This Sunday is the beginning of Advent, the preparatory month before Christmas. This week many Protestant churches will light the first candle of the advent wreath, the Sandler which symbolizes hope. Hope. Hope right now, are you kidding me?

For those who have recently faced a devastating loss, it’s almost profane to ask them to focus on hope for the week. If it’s not profane, it’s blind, because too often our definition of hope has been morphed into something that turns its back on reality. Reality is too hard to fathom at times, so we resort to rejecting it in favor of cliche. There are people who are unable to remain in the depths of their sorrow more than a few minutes before they fear it will devour them whole.

A candy coated hope will get the job done if it’s the only hope you have available.

However, if you define Hope as a much grittier, denser thing, something that glows even when surrounded by darkness, that’s something that makes more sense. When you think of Hope as the next small step, rather than a shining monument, that’s more doable. That’s the kind of Hope I can focus on, that’s the kind that is present even when muted and muffled by hardship and loss, and therefore I’ll be trying to turn my shoulder towards that Hope this first week of Advent.

Are you looking forward to this holiday season? Are you not looking forward to it? How will you carve out space for those who may experience it from a different perspective than your own? I’d love to hear your perspective.

Renewed Shenanigans

21
Feb

Since it’s a strange weathered-February, it seems right to finally do an update here. I haven’t been trying to maintain radio silence; I’ve been moving into an expanded role in a job that’s been developing on the side for a bit. It’s exciting and I’m now part owner of a small business, which shows you how little screening they do of these sorts of things.

That’s only part of it, and I could use your input with another part.

As you know, I’ve got a bee in my bonnet for creative experiences. Painting has been at the forefront for longer than I anticipated. My dad getting sick and then losing him made it virtually impossible to tap into the writing that I had identified with for so long. I’ve (mostly) accepted that.

[Shhh…I’ll tell you something extra true: there are moments when I wonder about lost-time or opportunities I might have missed. That’s my first impulse. Once I notice that impulse, I remind myself that’s coming from a place of scarcity and a place of worry that there are a finite number of opportunities available, a.k.a. if I don’t get one of these opportunities they’ll run out before my turn comes round again. I don’t have to accept that mentality, and I don’t. There’s more than enough to go around, for me and for you too.]

I’ve allowed myself to explore and develop other ways of expressing the roiling thoughts and feelings that have come in these years of wrestling. Paints, scribbling, ripping paper, smearing color – these have become a language without words.

Original mixed media art by TC Larson (that’s me!)

This is good; it’s good to have tools with which you approach the world. It gave me new ways to work through difficult situations and was useful then when, about six months after losing my dad, my daughter (I call her Princess Teacup here) was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.

The diagnoses is permanent and it has impacted, well, everything. It’s not that you don’t get used to it – you do. It’s that by necessity, it changes so much of the rhythm of your life.

Okay back to you, Dear Reader. You can see that I’m a little all over the place. I could really use your input.

Painting, writing, creativity.
Type 1 Diabetes
Family, friends, silliness, and motherhood.
Encouragement, faith, spirituality, crabby wrestling with the Church.

These are all things that flow through my life. Does it make you crazy to hear about ALL of them? Do you wish this space was more focused? Do you wish you knew you could come here and get a daily pep talk? Do you get tired of hearing about grief and loss? Would you like to read snippets of stories I’m working on, now that I’m writing again?

This is when I turn to you, Dear Reader, and I’d really value what you have to say. Speak freely now, friends. I want to hear it. Your input can help shape the direction I go. I plan revamp things in order to better make this space reflect some of the shifts that have happened, and hearing from you would really help me.

Even though it’s been a while, I want you to know I appreciate you and the opportunity (there’s that word again) to share here with you.

Now get outside and enjoy this bizarre February heat wave. We’re all suspicious of it and are pretty sure it can’t last. Remember, the high school winter sports finals haven’t happened yet, and that’s when we here in Minnesota almost always get hit with a blizzard (click here for proof!). Don’t put away those snow shovels yet.

Since I’m already being “that person” and asking for things, I’m just gonna go for all the bananas and put this here: Donate and support us at the JDRF One Walk Fundraiser.

Third week of Advent: Joy

11
Dec

Welcome to the third week of Advent.

So far we’ve focused on Hope and Love.

This week’s focus is Joy.

Joy is not the same as happiness. There’s supposed to be a difference between the two, though it’s sometimes hard to put your finger on. The way I was taught, happiness was fleeting and joy was ever-present. I’m starting to wonder about those semantics, and whether the air of superiority about them is warrented.

Happiness isn’t a bad thing, but it’s short-lived. Joy is supposed to be a deeper down emotion, something we retain regardless of our circumstances. It has the reputation of being something cultivated over a long arc, something tapped into by decision and a squarely set jaw.

For example, no one would say they’re joyful when their house just burnt down (although no body would say they’re happy about it, either).

However, they might say they still have joy when they lose their job and have nothing else lined up, even though they aren’t happy about it.

So what’s the difference?

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JD Salinger is said to have written, “The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid while joy is a liquid.”

(He should have written “Riddle me this!” as his first phrase of that quote. Let me know when you sniff out what the heck he was saying. Thanks fer nuthin’, Sensei Salinger.)

Joy seems to be consistently connected to a spiritual state, a grounded connectedness to ourselves, those around us, and a higher spiritual purpose. No wonder it feels superior to happiness, which is rooted in things lining up the way we expected or a positive outcome we were hoping for. Happiness is almost a consumable good; joy is more durable.

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As I was working on an art journal page for this week in Advent, I was working in layers and trying to create texture that I thought I would then paint white, so the texture would be the focus rather than the color. The idea was to add white as a final layer, but it would still have undertones of darkness (Payne’s grey and quindoctraone magenta) and brightness (metallic gold).

I liked the way it looked, but it didn’t work the way I thought.

That’s similar to the whole happiness vs. joy thing.

This didn’t end up being right. But I started with the idea of having joy be informed by life experience and rising above temporary circumstance.

The second page I worked on, I let myself grab colors I like and just slap ’em on a page. I had received a mailing with the word JOY on it, so that was handy. When I put it all together it looked like this…

Take two. This didn’t end up being right either. It was too…happy. Bright and cheerful is fine but to me joy speaks of deeper colors.

Whoa! Bienvinedos a Miami! Here’s a soundtrack to match this art journal page:

It’s fun, it’s cheery, it’s upbeat. All good things, but not exactly descriptors of Joy.

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It all got me to thinking. Happy doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Happy is considered the temperamental cousin of Joy. She’s looked down on as being shallow and flighty, depending on getting the foam on her cappuccino j-u-s-t right, or adjusting her recliner to the optimum angle. She’s supposed to be nothing like Joy, who is the stable, responsible one, the even-keeled, thoughtful cousin who manages to keep her chin up in the worst of circumstances, when Happy high-tails it to the Bahamas. Why is joy seen to be so superior to happiness?

Here’s something I think comes into play. Many character qualities or personality traits have varying degrees, deeper levels of the thing. Let me explain and you see what you think.

Nice is a good quality. We want people to be nice. But nice is not the same as kind. Kind is a whole other thing, with generosity and consideration implied in it. You can force yourself to be nice temporarily, but being kind is something that comes from a different place in the heart.

Smart is a similar example. Who doesn’t want to be smart? Smart’s good. But wise is a couple levels deeper. I don’t know if you can be wise without being smart but I DO know you can be smart WITHOUT being wise.

Happiness is the first degree, the entry level, of Joy. Weeping may endure for the night but Joy is gonna come in the morning. Joy is the thing that you can retain in spite of crummy circumstances or hardships that make it hard to get out of bed. Maybe joy is one of the things that MAKES you get out of bed.

Maybe joy is what happens with happiness sinks down into your soul and makes a home there.

The third and final try at "Joy" ended up like this. I think it makes sense this way, which joy being a calm presence in the middle of the color and movement of everyday. Do you agree?

The third and final try at “Joy” ended up like this. I think it makes sense this way, with joy being a calmly present in the middle of the color and movement of everyday. Do you agree?

Whatever joy is, I hope you find more of it in the coming week.

First week of Advent: Hope

28
Nov

Yesterday was the beginning of Advent, the lead up to the big shindig: Christmas. Some people have been barely containing their excitement and now they can let it out, like this guy…

Most of us are probably a little more subdued about it.

Even so, Christmas receives a lot of attention. Wherever you may find yourself in relation to it, unless you plan to go on vacation to a very remote island, you’re going to find it hard to avoid for the next month.

Something that receives less attention, and which has been less commercialized is the season of Advent. Advent can be a beneficial time for all of us. It doesn’t have to even be connected to the sweet little 8lb baby Jesus laying in a manger wearing golden fleece diapers (did you see Talladega Nights like I did?), although the source of most of our modern Advent traditions come from a Christian practice.

Here’s the thing about Advent: it can be used as a way of resetting ourselves and zeroing the white balance (so to speak) on our priorities.

Each week has a different focus, and each one is something that most of humankind can get behind. Hope, love, joy, peace — these are at the heart of Advent, and I’d argue they’re at the heart of what it means to be human. Each of these values alone is powerful enough, but teamed together they’re transformative.

Or at least I hope so.

So, with the intention to post on each of the Advent themes, let’s turn our attention to hope.

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I think hope is a little like waiting for the mist to clear.

You can be walking along, your path one you’ve been on before, and then all of a sudden everything’s different. You can’t see the same vistas, and the air feels different, even smells different. You keep walking, just putting your foot down and trusting that the path hasn’t undergone the same shift. You know enough to be patient. You know enough to remember that this has happened before though it was so long ago it’s almost out of your memory.

You have reason to hope, even though the circumstances don’t communicate hopefulness.

Hope is a thing with feathers… ~Emily Dickinson

Sometimes the mist clears and you’re back on your merry way, the change temporary, merely a blip.

Other times, the mist clears and you find the landscape has morphed into something new and not entirely pleasant.

Ultimately the outcome doesn’t matter, because hope is the act of believing in the face of uncertainty. In some of the worst circumstances, it’s the possibility of change, the possibility of miracles, the possibility of a positive resolution that gives us strength to push forward. On the one hand, that has the potential to blind us to reality. Blind hope doesn’t always yield helpful perspective. But the presence of hope when things look dire, even just a glimmer, can give us just enough courage to get through to the next step…and then the next…and the next.

Ash Wednesday, Funerals, and Mortality

10
Feb

My church doesn’t mark Ash Wednesday. There was recently a brief mention of the season of Lent, but that was about it. It’s not too surprising — it wasn’t something we made much of back when I was a child, either.

I grew up associating Lent with Catholicism, and at that point Catholicism was most often portrayed as something our Protestant heritage had cast off, something we had rejected as a lesser form of faith, something that was all about ritual, obligation and accumulating points.

How arrogant.

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Did you ever see that movie “Wedding Crashers” with Owen Wilson and the big guy from Chicago Vince Vaugn?

OK I didn’t ever see that movie either — I heard it was really bawdy and that type of humor makes me uncomfortable. The clean gist of it is that those guys show up at weddings when they don’t even know the bride or the groom.

I feel little bit like I’d fit into a strange sequel to that premise because I just went to a funeral where I didn’t know the person who passed away. I can’t tell if that makes me a funeral crasher? It’s got to sound at least borderline crashed status.

I don’t even know the son of the woman who died.

Am I sounding creepy yet?

I went to the funeral because I know the daughter-in-law. We work together. I enjoyed her very much but I don’t know her all that well yet, not in an emotional way. She didn’t need me there. The son didn’t need me there. I asked myself more than once whether it was a good idea that I attend.

What I do know — or what I’m starting to know despite my resistance — is that funerals aren’t only about the person who passed away.

With any flex of the imagination we are shoved into picturing the conditions we will one day find ourselves, in one way or another depending on how far we want to run with the thought. It doesn’t take much to realize that this isn’t your last event of this kind. And once you’ve been the one to sit in that front row, trying to make sense of what’s happening around you in that moment, the sting of death is one you feel for a long time afterward.

The fact that the funeral took place the night before Ash Wednesday was not lost on me.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

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In the bleak midwinter…

I held my own Ash Wednesday service today.

As I write that, I hear how wacky it sounds.

I read aloud (because I had the house to myself for a little while) from the Common Book of Prayer, knelt and prayed, and even played a couple songs on our piano, just because it seemed right.

Although I was alone, I knew I was also gathered with thousands of people across the world who were also acknowledging their mortality, their mistakes and shortcomings, and marking the beginning of the season of Lent and the coming of Easter. The solitude while joining a great tradition is what appealed to me, a great tradition going back through the ages. I want that history, that sense of heritage, even though I find myself wrestling with understanding the differing scholarly interpretations of what Jesus accomplished at Easter. And it’s probably time I expand my tradition base to include some practices that are unfamiliar to me.

One if those practices is the acknowledgement of our own mortality, something we often do a good job of ignoring. I think it’s important to put ourselves in the proper perspective sometimes, and Ash Wednesday is a good time for that.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.